More in Movies »

More Screens, but Fewer Movies to Choose From

By GLENN COLLINS

Published: March 18, 1991

Moviegoers in New York these days are caught in a curious paradox. Their choice of theaters is greater than it has been in years, but the choice of films on the movie-house menu has become more limited -- and more like what is available anywhere else.

The foreign, independent and art films that have always been the staple of Manhattan moviegoing find little place in the abundance of new screens. "The film product in Manhattan is increasingly similar to what you see in the suburbs," said Wendy Keys, executive producer for programming at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. She was referring to the fare at many of the newer theaters, which consists largely of mainstream commercial movies that receive multiple bookings.

According to the Metropolitan Theater Owners Association, a trade group, 40 new screens -- most of them in "plexes" -- have opened in Manhattan since January 1989, with more to come this month. Among the newcomers are the Cineplex Odeon Chelsea Cinemas, with nine screens; Loew's 19th Street East Theater, with five screens; Cineplex Odeon Worldwide Theaters, with six screens; the City Cinemas Murray Hill Cinemas with four screens, and the latest addition, the City Cinemas Village East, which opened last month.

An $8 million renovation of the Yiddish Art Theater on Second Avenue at 12th Street, the Village East now has five screens, and it will have two more by the end of this month. Three other multiplex movie houses are also on the drawing boards.

Even the comfortable old standbys are multiplying: both the Sutton and the Murray Hill have also been "plexed."

<> <> Gone with such cinematic landmarks as the New Yorker and the Cinema Studios, the Thalia and the Bleecker Street Cinema -- all of which have closed in recent years -- are venues for the kind of out-of-the-mainstream movies for which New York was always a mecca.

Many alternative-film distributors have for years counted on New York audiences to give their movies a boost. "This is the media center of the world," said Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of Miramax Films, a leading distributor of independent movies. "So if a foreign-language movie is ever going to make it, it has to break out in New York."

Bruce Goldstein, director of repertory programming at Film Forum, the three-screen alternative-film center on West Houston Street, says that even the perception of "art film" has changed. "It's a namby-pamby term that has no meaning anymore," he said.

"Nevertheless," he added, "you know it when you see it. And a lot of the places where you used to see it aren't there anymore." Where Did the Paris Go?

The director Paul Mazursky, an avid moviegoer who now divides his time between New York and Los Angeles, would agree. Not long ago he was scouting locations for a scene in his next movie, "The Pickle," in which one of the characters looks out the window of the Plaza Hotel at the Paris Theater.

"So I took a walk over to the Paris to figure out how I'd shoot the scene," Mr. Mazursky said, "and I discover that it isn't the Paris anymore, it's the Fine Arts, and there isn't a French movie playing there, as there always was; it's 'Alice.' "

Long the city's flagship house for French films, the Paris, on 58th Street just west of Fifth Avenue, was the theater where Claude Lelouch's film "A Man and a Woman" played for a year back in 1966 and where Francois Truffaut's films were sometimes shown. Last September, however, Loews Theaters took over the lease of the 586-seat theater, changed its name, and began exhibiting a mix of American and foreign films.

The limited number of houses for foreign films has obviously limited the options of distribution companies. Miramax, for example, had to postpone the opening of "Ju Dou," the Oscar-nominated Chinese film directed by Zhang Yimou which began its run yesterday at the Lincoln Plaza, the triple-screen house at Broadway and 62d Street.

"We'd have loved to open it much sooner, with all the Academy Award heat," said Mr. Weinstein of "Ju Dou," which gained additional publicity with stories that the Chinese Government attempted to limit the film's release. But no other prestige foreign-film theater was available before then. Only 2 Uptown Theaters

Mr. Weinstein said that aside from Lincoln Plaza, the only other sought-after uptown theater for the release of new foreign films is the 68th Street Playhouse, a small single-screen house on Third Avenue. And even there, foreign films aren't the sole fare; "Hamlet," with Mel Gibson and Glenn Close, is the current feature.

Of the two, Lincoln Plaza, with its West Side location, has lower operating expenses, enabling it to play films long enough to find an audience through word of mouth, which is vitally important to movies that aren't supported by a major advertising campaign. "Cinema Paradiso," the sleeper hit from Giuseppe Tornatore that won the Oscar as best foreign film last year, ran at the Lincoln Plaza for 34 weeks. Currently playing there are "Ay, Carmela!," "The Nasty Girl" and "Open Doors."

Not all of Manhattan's new "plexes" are ignoring nonmainstream films, however. The Angelika Film Center, a six-screen house downtown at Houston and Mercer Streets, is showing "La Femme Nikita," "Iron and Silk, "Cyrano de Bergerac," "Shadow of China," and "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead." It presents other independent and quirky offerings in a program of midnight shows on weekends. Soup, Salad and Sixplex

Angelika, which opened in September 1989, has a lobby cafe that serves homemade soups, salads and espresso. "It's a very interesting venue that has established itself as a gathering place," said Ms. Keys of the Film Society. "You go the the theater, you run into your friends, and then you decide what you want to see."

The new Village East, which is actually the old Yiddish Art Theater lovingly restored, is also eschewing a straight mainstream lineup, playing instead a mix of alternative films and upscale major studio releases. On the bill are "Taxi Blues," "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge," "Scenes From a Mall," "The Field," and "Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol."

The relative paucity of art-film houses in their own neighborhoods has apparently sent some Manhattanites out of town. Robert Roberts, who owns the Lost Picture Show, a 275-seat theater on Springfield Avenue next to the Union Market in Union, N.J., said that "increasing numbers of New Yorkers are coming over to see films they can't find, or can't get into, in Manhattan." Two recent films that Mr. Roberts said pulled strong trans-Hudson audiences were "Vincent and Theo" and "Cyrano de Bergerac."

It is reassuring to note that Manhattan's moviegoing landscape hasn't been entirely altered. "To me, the longest running show in New York is the Modern -- the same place I used to see films as a kid," said Film Forum's Bruce Goldstein of the presentations in the Museum of Modern Art, which have been continuous since 1935. "They're still doing what they did. I ask you, What other theater is able to say that?"

Photos: The Angelika Film Center is one of the few new Manhattan cinemas offering nonmainstream films as the New Yorker and others once did. (The New York Times)